Pattern Recognition #356 - Demons

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

20 February 2025

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

Right, so I apologize! Becuase last week was the Prerelease of Aetherdrift, I don't actually have two weeks worth of Slow Grow to discus with you all. Which means that you'll get a different subject today that the one I had intended. Which will now come next week. Sorry!

Anyway, now that I have to pivot to another subject, I find myself thinking about Tri... Typ... Kindred cards. That being cards that all share a similar creature type and what I can say about that. So I went flipping through my list'o'cards, as well as hitting the 'Random' button on Scryfall until something caught my eye.

So let's talk about Demons. Possessing approximately 200 cards across the game, with plenty of token makers and cards that care about Demons suck as the recently printed mono- finisher in Standard, Unholy Annex / Ritual Chamber. So there's a quite a bit already, and there's a few good reasons why.

Demons started appearing in the game from the very first in Limited Edition Alpha with Lord of the Pit - a favourite of mine as I loved the high-risk, high-reward play that came with him in that time - and Demonic Hordes. Another powerful card for the time. Or at least I remember it being that way. That was 30 years ago, give or take. They were, however, almost instantly dropped from the game.

Why? Well.... Moral Guardians. The late 90's were at the tail end of the a surge in... religious people with loudspeakers and a platform who refused to tolerate the existence of things they didn't approve of, and in this case, it was the idea of darkness in Fantasy, and the biggest thing they hated was Dungeons and Dragons, with Magic being a late-comer to the problem. Sad to say, my mom didn't want me playing Magic because of the Demons in them, even when I tried to explain to her that they were depicted as evil and bad, she didn't like them at all.

So Wizards backed down. They were a small and niche company and couldn't fight the social forces of the day so they relented. A few art changes here and there, a few quick wipes, and Wizards stopped printing or mentioning Demons and instead switched to using Horrors as their de facto Evils. Like Abyssal Horror or Delraich. You know, bad things that are obviously bad!

However, the cultural tides that prevented Demons from being used in any real capacity were (relatively) removed. The trend that bound Wizards in the 90's had grown soft when the year rolled over to 2000 and Wizards felt comfortable then in starting to plan to put Demons back into the game and they wouldn't face backlash. Which they did with Grinning Demon in Onslaught as a means to test the waters and then Havoc Demon in Legions as a followup. Then next year with Reiver Demon in Mirrodin.

Nothing. Not a word, not a peep. No one complained, and they were back on the table as viable and justifiable creatures to use.

So, what are Demons exactly? In a setting like Magic with its Multiverse of Planes, there is no traditional 'source' for them that would allow them to spread across the Multiverse like they have. So instead, Wizards took the same explanation they made for Angels, and simply switched which colour they used. Which means, for those who aren't up on the detailed minuate of the lore, Demons are not Natural.

Well, OK, they are natural in the sense that they come from nature, but rather they exist as a natural manifestation of the natural mana in the plane. Just as Angels are , Demons are . They form from the pure essence of selfishness, of cruelty, of opportunistic parasitism, and sacrificing whatever possible to gain as much as possible. The only thing that matters in yourself.

And where Angels seek to use their power to empower, to guide and to help, to create more mana for them, the Demons seek to exploit and expand their own natural inclinations to create more mana them. They offer deals, offer spite, and stoke the worst inclinations of those they interacted with. Demons would often seek out those who were already aligned with their color and offer beneficial pacts to them. These are not happy-go-lucky deals where people walk away happy, but rather contracts designed to harm, to curse and to generally empower the poor schmuck who made them in order to generate more business.

But Demons are not believers in zero-sum games. Yes, as a whole, the color does have this problem, but they are willing to negotiate and make deals or perform deeds that benefit themselves and their contractor. Just look at how Liliana's Contract went down until she went and had to break it for her own reasons. Not smart ones mind you, and she definitely had outside coercion for that, but them's the breaks when you're mono-.

Sometimes, someone is just better than you.

Mechanically, Demons tend to be on the more expensive side, with 21 Demons having a mana value of 3 or less. You'll want ready for the most part before you start casting Demons, with a few exceptions of course. Demons also come in two distinct flavors. The first is 'Power with a Price'. That being the creature is far more powerful than its cost would indicate, and that is because they have some drawback to them to make it maybe not worth that much. Such as with Demon of Catastrophies causing you to sacrifice another creature as part of the casting cost, or Abyssal Persecutor, who prevents you from winning the game.

The second type of Demon is a creature that is accurately costed, but comes with an ability that is a constant, or once per turn punisher to your opponents. Indulgent Tormentor can give you extra cards, or whittle away at your opponent's resources. or Harvester of Souls for additional card draw, or Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, for just some punishing.

Yes, there are others, but in my experience - and in checking Scryfall - they tend to be in the minority.

Because of this, Demons as a Typal focused deck tend more towards high risk, but high value and high reward, where if you can get your feet under you long enough to get a Demon or two into place, and your opponent(s) haven't been able to get to you while you were setting up, then you're pretty much good to win! In this way, Demon Typal decks tend more towards Combo/Midrange, with a side of Control. They need to aim for the late game in order to win, and facing down decks that push out the door for a quick win, such as with RDW decks, the race is on from the get-go.

I have had enough examples of this on Arena with my own R(w)DW deck going against mono- decks on Arena Standard. I know the play lines and patterns, and it's a tough fight. I've probably lost more than I've won, and I am still tweaking the deck to deal with them in Bo1 matches.

Anyway, this late game ability to shape and control the game makes Demons 's Iconic creature type. That being that they can and will show up in every set, even if it's all but a single representation at Rare 1 or Rare 2. The Demon of the set, as an Iconic, it intended to represent some core aspect of the colour. The Speed Demon from Aetherdrift (to be released tomorrow!) not only invokes one of the set's core mechanics, but also displays the classic "pay life to draw cards" that this colour routinely does. Just be careful you don't kill yourself with it.

Or stepping back a set, Valgavoth, Terror Eater, the big bad of Duskmourne. This guy steals cards as they die, and allows you to play them by paying life rather than mana for them. And remember, is too cheap, this guy halves that price! He's graveyard recursion, and massive self-protection rolled into one package. And is often the target of recursion himself just to bypass his huge casting cost.

Demons represent power with a price. And if you're lucky, someone else will pay the price. But sometimes, it will have to be you. The question in calling them up, to craft these elementals of pure mana, is can you pay it? Or perhaps you should remember the first rule of summoners....

Do Not Call Up What You Cannot Put Down

Thank you all for reading! I'll see you next week when I talk about my first two weeks of Slow Grow! Week 1 was ... something, and Week 2 is tomorrow.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!